KTEH signs on in 1964
On Monday, October, 19, 1964 at 9:27 am KTEH was born….27 minutes late.
Here's how it happened, According the Superintendent of Schools Bulletin.
KTEH was licensed by the Santa Clara Office of Education. The visionary plan was to "beam" instructional television into 300 area schools beginning on October 19. On October 10th
things began to go wrong.
KTEH's one-ton antenna was to be placed on a 50′ tower. The tower arrived on the 10th, 2 weeks late and only 9 days before the inaugural broadcast was scheduled.
It was barely off the truck before The Dept. of public Works pronounced the tower "structurally inadequate." A special team of welders boarded a jet and flew to San Jose to modify the tower. They worked around the clock using spotlights to illuminate the tower after dark. Two days before the first broadcast, October 17th, the tower was up and the antenna was in position.
In the meantime, news that the new station's videotape player was on backorder arrived. This was an especially unfortunate development since all the programming was on video tape. The salesman, who negotiated the contract, made some quick arrangements and a borrowed tape machine arrived at 4 p.m. Thursday the 15th.
On Friday the 16th the FCC called to say the station's license to begin broadcasting on Monday had not been granted because the request to broadcast had not been received. A panicked call went out to the Assistant Superintendent of the Post Office in Washington, D.C.. Although the package was sent "Registered Air" and marked "Special Delivery, " the Superintendent found no record of the package but offered to start a search for it. By 7 p.m. on Friday he had located the package.
As luck would have it, the FCC was in the same building as the Post Office. The Superintendent personally delivered the package to the Chief of Educational Broadcasting at 9 a.m. Eastern time on Monday, October 19. KTEH's License was granted at 8:56 a.m. After a short program test, the first show to be broadcast from KTEH went on the air at 9:27 a.m.
As the 1964 Superintendent of Schools Bulletin noted, "this is what comes of positive thinking."
Leave a Reply